Sorting Magnetic Letters Helps Teach the Alphabet in a Fun, Easy Way

Sorting magnetic letters is an easy, hands-on way to teach the alphabet in preschool and kindergarten. Use free printable magnetic letter sorting mats for this early literacy activity (grab your copy at the end of this post).

Today I want to talk about just one simple method – sorting magnetic letters.

This post was originally published April 4, 2013. It’s been updated with a few new photos, more information, and printable sorting mats (as requested by some awesome readers).

What’s So Great About Magnetic Letters?

Even before the children start sorting, magnetic letters are teaching.

Kids use their senses to observe magnetic letters

To begin with, just the act of playing with and holding the magnetic letters helps teach a child. The letters will look different, whether by size, shape, color, or another defining characteristic.

On top of that, the letters will feel different in her hands. The letter ‘x’ isn’t going to feel exactly the same as the letter ‘a’. While she may not start out knowing what the letters are, her senses will be cataloging what she sees and feels.

A child’s natural curiosity makes itself known

Plus, the child’s innate sense of curiosity will eventually come into play. He’ll want to know what these things are that he’s playing with, so he’ll ask questions.

He will make connections, sometimes with an adult’s help of course. For example, he might point out that one of the magnetic letters looks like a letter he’s seen in his name. He might notice that one of the letters is on the stop sign he sees in his neighborhood every day.

How Sorting Magnetic Letters Helps Teach the Alphabet

Sorting magnetic letters might seem like just a math activity, but it’s so much more than that! In actuality, it’s an amazing, hands-on way to teach children about letters.

Children compare and contrast letters

When a child is asked to sort magnetic letters, it forces her to attend to the similarities and differences within the letters.

This will make her take note that the letters are not all the same. Even if she’s just focusing on the color of the letter, she will quickly learn that there are certain differences to be found.

Keep in mind that sorting the letters can be done individually, in small groups, and as an entire class. Children can sort on their own or with an adult there to help. Asking questions and making comments as the children complete this task helps provide them with language.

It also helps draw their attention to the individual letters. For example, you might make simple comments like, “I notice that the uppercase ‘E’ doesn’t have any holes, but the lowercase ‘e’ does.”

There’s a huge variety of ways for sorting magnetic letters

Below is a list of some ideas regarding how children can sort magnetic letters. Please keep in mind that there are different levels of skill involved in the letter sorts.

Choose ways of sorting that best meet the needs of the children you are working with.

Color

Letter

Uppercase versus lowercase

In my name

In my friend’s name

Have holes

Have curves

Straight lines

Vertical lines

Tails

Tall versus short

Sounds

Those are just some ways of sorting magnetic letters. What are some other ways you sort them with your children?

You don’t need anything fancy to sort magnetic letters with the kids

As you can see from some of my older photos, you don’t need anything special to sort the letters.

I’ve often used construction paper that I’ve handwritten graphs on, and the children seriously don’t mind. Sometimes it was a quick graph I made on the whiteboard easel before circle time or center time.

Of course, having a set of already-made magnetic letter sorting mats is just handy. It means they’re ready to be pulled out as needed, or you can store them in the literacy center so the kids can use them during independent time. For these, you can just laminate hand-drawn sorting mats or you can use printable sorting mats.

I’ve put together 5 free printable sorting mats you can grab at the end of this post. Print the sorting mats, laminate them, and use them with the kids tomorrow.

At the moment, I’m in the middle of putting together a giant pack of sorting mats. Once those are ready, I’ll share them here.

In terms of storing the letters, I love this little hardware/craft bin. It’s been with me through multiple moves (one of which was cross-country) and many students.

I also have something like this hardware organizer “briefcase” for when I’m traveling from room to room with the letters. This is also handy to keep things organized in a mobile literacy center.

Huge Magnetic Letter Sorting Pack

We now have a HUGE (seriously, it’s over 300 pages) pack devoted to sorting magnetic letters. There are a variety of prompts in the form of full-page and half-page sorting mats, as well as printable prompts you can attach to your magnetic teacher easel during whole group learning.

Get Your Free Printable

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Thank you for this post. It would never have occured to me to do something as simple as get my son to sort the letters by colour. But you are so right that just holding the letters will help him get used to them. I’m going to try this.

Thanks so much for visiting!! 🙂 I love how simple ideas can help children learn. Over the course of my teaching years, I have seen magnetic letter activities allow kiddos to explore so many important concepts.

Hi Angie! Thanks for stopping by. I was just looking up to see if there are any good places to buy the letters in bulk. They’re sold in larger amounts on Amazon and the like, but the price is more or the quality is poor. {Anyone else reading this — have you happened upon a good resource for bulk letters?} The letters I always come back to are those from Lakeshore. They come in uppercase, lowercase, and they also have jumbo versions (which are great for sorting and for using on the teacher magnetic white board). I’ve had many of my letters for over 10 years, and they’re still going strong!

In terms of how many — that’ll vary depending on the names in your class, of course. I’d start with 2 uppercase and 2 lowercase sets to begin with. If you have more in the budget, though, aim for more. There are always so many things to do with magnetic letters! The bin of letter tiles are also great (but they’re all one shape – square – and they’re not magnetic).